Link popularity is the total number of websites that link to your website. Major search engines support "link:" operator. “link:” (without the quotation marks) is typed in front of the URL about which you want to find the number of websites linked. Once you enter this information total count of websites linked to the website you entered appears. This link count is different for different search engines because results shown represent the number of inbound links that are known to that search engine (which will vary based on the size of their database). Major search engines (Google especially) apply many filters against the inbound links thus some inbound links may not be counted in the total.

Importance

Quality link popularity can significantly increase traffic to your website. Well placed links are an accomplished source of consistent and targeted traffic. Most of the major search engines now consider link popularity into their relevancy algorithms. Increasing the number of quality, relevant websites which link to your website can actually improve search engine rankings of your website. Link popularity check is an optimum method to quantifiably and independently measure your website's online awareness and overall visibility. Link popularity refers to the total number of links or "votes" that a search engine has found for your website.

The philosophy of link popularity is that important sites will attract many links. Content-poor sites will attract any link with difficulty. According to link popularity all incoming links are not equal. In other words, the quality of incoming links are more important than number of them. Link popularity is a major factor considered by search engines in determining a site's position in search results. A site with more quality inbound links is positioned higher than a similar site with fewer links.